One hears about the iron age and the bronze age—eras in which people discovered metallurgy. But how did that happen? Was it like:
1. Look at rock
2. See shiny
3. Try to melt the shiny out of the rock
4. Profit?
Explain it to me!
In: 1643
It’s more of a natural evolution than I think you realize. Several “technology trees” lead to metal refining.
1. Need place to sleep, make little fort from branches and mud
2. Notice after a few days mud kinda dries out and gets hard
3. Try making little bricks and cups and and figurines and stuff, dry them out in the sun. Sorta works
4. Realize some dirts work better than others, figure out clay is great for this kind of thing
5. Figure out you can speed up the process by drying them near the fire
6. Figure out placing directly in the fire actually “fires” them, makes them really strong and hold water
7. Try placing other materials in fire to see what happens, notice some kinds of dirt make little shiny metal deposits at the bottom, collect lots and make the biggest glob you can
At the same time
1. Need food. Animals are hard to catch
2. Throwing rocks kinda works, but it’s hard to throw far enough
3. Throwing sticks kinda works, but they don’t do as much harm
4. Sharpen a big stick, Spear!
5. Attach a sharp rock or obsidian, Better Spear!
6. But the rocks are heavy, wood gets dull, and obsidian breaks to easily.
New resource, and an old problem. Just took one of the millions of people around to try to use the metal for a knife/spear, and the rest is history. Humans are naturally curious and whoever managed to make the first metal device would have had a huge leg up and their tribe would have refined the practice over a few decades. They would have been so successful that there would have been strong motivation to experiment more with the new tech which would have lead to some basic alloys, entering the bronze age.
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